“And then there are people who say ‘Oh he’s so puffed up with his own importance’ and people who never wanted me to win in the first place, and in many cases strove very hard to stop me winning, have tended to feel a lingering sense of grievance.

“Sometimes people who perhaps haven’t achieved what they want to achieve in their political career can display some sign of resentment – not necessarily because they themselves wanted to be speaker, because they feel ‘well, my talents haven’t been recognised.

"'That fellow was a rather freewheeling, independent minded’ – perhaps even, in their minds, disloyal – backbench member, and suddenly he pops up as speaker. 'And we don’t like it.’

“And just as I don’t bear a grudge against anybody who didn’t vote for me, I would argue that if people are fair minded they shouldn’t, three years on, be sulking about who won.

"They’ve either vocalised their criticism in public, or they’ve constantly briefed against me behind the scenes.

“And of course I have an idea of who some of those people are, and I think it’s a sadness – a sadness for them that they’re so embittered, that they’re so resentful, that they’re constantly seeking to undermine and to brief against me and so on.”

Mr Bercow's popularity among Conservative MPs – his colleagues before he was elected to the independent Speakership - reached a new low in April when he forced David Cameron to come to the Commons to answer an urgent question about the role of Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary.

Defending the move, the Speaker said that the matter "needed to be urgently aired in Parliament," adding that the Prime Minister had not objected to appearing.

"In any event, much as I have the highest respect for the Prime Minister both as a man of great ability and for the office he holds ... the team captain cannot also be the referee," he said.

"The Prime Minister's job is to captain his team, his party and his Government. My job is to serve as Speaker of the House of Commons."

Asked about his media critics, Mr Bercow said: “I’m supremely uninterested as to what is written in many of the newspapers.

"Their utterances are absolutely of no interest to me whatsoever. I’m sorry to disappoint them, but they’re just not important.”

Mr Bercow described his wife Sally, a star on the social media site Twitter who became a tabloid favourite after appearing on Celebrity Big Brother and posing for photographs opposite Parliament wearing only a bed sheet, as "my asset".

He said her detractors would not "dare" to raise her exploits with him in public, adding: "These people are no-hopers, [this is] totally low-grade, sub-standard, down-market, low music hall drivel and the sort of people who are responsible for it probably wouldn't dare to debate the issue in any very public way.

"They certainly wouldn't take me on. I'm not angry about it. I'm sometimes quite exasperated but basically my feeling is one of disdain and contempt."